The world is a wild and scary place, full of monsters, malevolence, and myriad evils to be expunged.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a place to unwind? A place to hang your hat, build and customize, and to call your home?

Wouldn't it be nice to leave your mark in the world? To build a permanent edifice as a testament to the ages, a bulwark of safety against the ravages of time?

Would you build a mighty temple to your gods, proclaiming your faith far and wide? A dreary dungeon complete with a grotto of poisonous herbs and holding cells for those that would oppose you? Or a quiet cottage in the forest, an idyllic and relaxing retreat holding a simple magical study?

The Fortresses, Temples, & Strongholds ruleset holds options to build all these and more, allowing players to customize the world they live in and create a known presence that NPCs such as merchants, hirelings, soldiers, and spellcasters can flock to and partake in. A stronghold can become the center of a campaign, a place of respite, or a valiant bastion against the dark forces that threaten the world.

One of the most popular offerings from creator Walrock Homebrew, an earlier version of this content has scored a 9.2/10 on /r/boh5e, a subreddit devoted to reviewing and collecting the best homebrew content on the internet. Extensively played, tested, and refined, Fortresses, Temples, & Strongholds remains the popular standard for 5e stronghold creation.

Hi, if you get a chance, could you explain what you mean by 'Room Points'. I'm not sure what you mean, say whether they take up X space or what. Looks awesome aside from that. Thanks

Tyler BMay 20, 2017 6:04 pm UTC

CREATOR

"Room Points" are sort of an abstraction between available space and the capacity of a structure to support additional rooms. They aren't physically tied to a specific quantity (for example, 3 room points doesn't equate to a certain square footage), but are a rough measure of both the empty rooms that can be furnished and the building's existing hireling infrastructure.

I'd equate room points with hit points, in terms of both their intention and functionality. Neither represent just one thing, but both give you a good general understanding of the situation based on the amount that you have.

Raoul KApril 15, 2017 12:17 pm UTC

PURCHASER

This is excellent! Something that you might want to add is having the PDF not be rendered as pictures, in order to make it searchable. Other than that I think it's an absolutely wonderful addition to my game. Thank you!

Robert KApril 05, 2017 6:00 pm UTC

PURCHASER

Troops costs (40 gp per day for an archer) seems ridiculous. Otherwise seems food for thought.

Tyler BApril 05, 2017 10:47 pm UTC

CREATOR

Design thoughts on troop costs:

The PHB says that a skilled hireling (2 gp / day) can be one skilled in a weapon in place of the tool or skill proficiency they normally get. I equated this with the Guard (CR 1/8) as a good baseline, as the Guard is as basic a troop as you can get. From there, the cost scales up exponentially with CR.

The problem here is that an Archer has a CR of 2, which is several steps above the Guard's baseline (1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2), and the price increases incrementally each step. Consider also that a lone Archer with a CR of 2 is considered an even challenge for a party of four 2nd-level adventurers, so I wanted to place a price point that would reflect the power level you're receiving. In my mind, the Archer as represented in Volo's isn't a rank-and-file minion (like the Guard), but more of a specialist. When I read "Archer," I think "Sniper."

I made the assumption that, if the players are going to field an army, it would mostly...See more consist of Guards with a few specialists like the Archer tossed in. Depending on the depth of the PC's war chests, they might even have a spellcaster (or two) in the mix, but I likewise wanted to illustrate that high-level casters and troops (such as the Champion and certain Warlocks) would be out of grasp for all but the most monetarily-endowed top-level heroes.

It ends up looking a little wacky, and a rebalance could certainly be possible or desirable, but those are my thoughts going into making the troop pricing. If you tweak the rules and it works for your group, let me know what you tweaked, and I'll see if I can't incorporate it into future balance calculations for this product. =)

My concern with this one is that it runs somewhat contrary to the rules outlined in the PHB. Namely: A hireling with no skills trained (unskilled) has a listed price of 2 sp / day, while a hireling with at least one skill trained is 2 gp / day, and these prices are listed as minimums.

Take for example the lawyers in that document. I'd assume they're skilled (trained in, I dunno, History), but the novice has a price of 5 sp. Even a terrible lawyer, being skilled, should have a minimum cost of 2 gp / day by PHB rules, and the others should scale up from there.

Mileage may vary from group to group and using these isn't a bad idea by any stretch, but I try and align content I make with Wizards' official content as much as possible, to make it as universally usable as I can.

The second Wizards introduces hirelings with lesser prices in official content, though, I'll instantly be adopting that model. Having an untrained...See more farm worker make 2 sp a day is just bananas.

Tyler BJuly 30, 2017 9:35 pm UTC

CREATOR

(referring to income tiers and taxation)

I love this. This is the kind of brilliant insanity that I would do on my free time.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention, I'll be sure to use it (and credit the redditor, of course) if and when I finally expand into doing town/city/kingdom rules.

George SJuly 31, 2017 1:53 am UTC

PURCHASER

Awesome :) I've been working on a similar system myself, but I much prefer your's. I'd love to show you what I have sometime and chat over skype perhaps? My system has trade, tax, food, population etc and it's all very easy to manage. Would love to compare notes and swap ideas.

Also, could you quarter the amount of people lodgings gives you? A cottage/shop is a small building, seems insane to be able to fit 24 people in there, let alone 50 in a tiny room. I am in the middle of working out a grid system for rooms etc. and my houses can be minimum 4 5ft squares

George SJuly 31, 2017 2:12 am UTC

PURCHASER

Also, in regard to the guard 1/8CR=2gp/day baseline, that being 1CR=16gp/day if I've understood what you've done, I think the baseline should be 1CR=2gp/day and you suddenly get a much more realistic wage system in my eyes.

In my worlds there is a 12 month x 28 day calendar
A guard's monthly income on 1CR=2gp/day would be 0.25gp/day for 7gp/month
In my system, a unit of food, which can feed one person for a day is worth 0.1gp
Also in my system the hireling pays rent or a lease on the property they live in in my settlement. This is dependant on the size of the property in tiles. This is easy to calculate as there are only so many types. One 4 square property containing a bed and some other junk is only 1gp a month.
Therefore costs of the hireling guard are 3.8gp vs their income of 7gp, leaving nice amount to live off comfortably and have everything they need.

Sorry for all the babbling comments, I just very much enjoy this aspect of D&D and I'm excited to see...See more someone else does too!

George SJuly 31, 2017 2:18 am UTC

PURCHASER

I also have an industry system I'd like to show you! :)

Tyler BJuly 31, 2017 5:13 am UTC

CREATOR

>lodgings

Two ways I could go with this:

1) I could scale how many people they hold with a structure's room points (i.e. 25 x [room points] in communal bunks), which would logically scale the revenue (for private rooms).

or

2) Restrict Lodgings to being only built in structures of 2 room points or greater. This is the lazy option.

Honestly leaning towards option 2, as it requires less math work to make sure lodgings remain balanced in a larger structure.

Tyler BJuly 31, 2017 6:14 am UTC

CREATOR

>CR and gold scaling

I initially tethered CR to wage, but it became loose and more rounded as levels increased, attempting to create a curve such that higher CR hirelings were dramatically more expensive. I succeeded a bit too well at that; as such, hireling wages are my highest priority to fix.

This places the wage of a guard at 2 gp / day, a (3 CR) archer at 25 gp / day, and a (9 CR) champion at 73 gp. I'll likely round these values to the nearest 5.

You can see my current math for this at the following link:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17DZ9fQAaIupakh_f_dDltjuiVXggAS4qZPA7NJ9Z89k/edit?usp=sharing

Tyler BJuly 31, 2017 6:21 am UTC

CREATOR

>industry system and skype

I'm not much of one for voice chat, but I'd love to talk more in private messages. Sadly, DM's Guild doesn't have much of that - you can always message me on reddit (/u/the_singular_anyone) or on my blog, linked at the end of each of my works. I'd love to hear about your industry system and see what you have in mind.

Also, if you're looking for a good place to discuss in-depth math and homebrew content in general, /r/unearthedarcana on reddit is a great community full of huge math and homebrew nerds like myself. I highly recommend it, if you haven't seen it already.

George SAugust 01, 2017 4:39 pm UTC

PURCHASER

I was thinking more text chat on skype and I can feed you my screen to show you what I'm working on. I still need to make a reddit account. If you have a skype, could you email me your address? gsullivan.art@gmail.com

I still think that's far too expensive, considering how little income you can make from a city. In my game the industry system produces a lot of income, but I pay most of my soldiers 6-10gp/month and most of my workers 4-10gp a month.

Very good and fair for the most part, but there are a number of things i felt could have definitely have been more thought out. For example, a Planar Travel dock, for some reason, is the least profitable out of all the docks. Furthermore, the Mi [...]

This was the first homebrew/third-party content I allowed at my table. It is professionally created, wonderfully balanced, and allows for a great deal of player freedom. The best rules content takes what is available in the Dungeon Master's Guid [...]

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